a BIG Challenge

So we went to the Obgyn on Saturday morning. Let’s just get all the nitty gritty updates out-of-the-way before I tell you about what’s REALLY special going on in my life this week.

Baby is doing well! He’s hit 1.6kg and while still a little small, he’s gaining on his ranks in the 20th percentile 🙂

You have no idea how relieving it is to hear that our little bub is being consistent – and although we already figured this out the last meeting we had with the doctor, it obviously doesn’t hurt to have the news reaffirmed more than once hey?

Well. Doc still wants to see us every 2 weeks just to make sure that things don’t suddenly turn for the worst, so we’ll probably be updating quite frequently from here on out. It helps quite a fair bit that we’ve finally gotten on the ball with the package that he offers so we don’t have to worry about massive bills every time we head to his office.

But in any case, I really can’t be more relieved.

Everyone tells me that the 3rd trimester is when baby is going to put on the bulk of his weight, so just push through the last stretch, things will be fine 🙂

So that being said, I’ve just gotta keep my appetite up and eat on through the next 2 months. And if you ask me, eating throughout the Christmas season? That’s not going to be tough.

Yeah. And this happened AFTER we left the obgyn’s office can you believe it.

I’m really so frustrated about this. After visiting the ENT and everything and finally beginning to see the light at the end of the stuffed-nose, it’s come back. With a vengeance.

I started working up a fever complete with the burning eyeball feeling that sometimes accompanies this sort of sore throaty, flu sicknesses and although didn’t hit past 38 degrees, I tell you I felt like the world was going to end for me.

I’ve got a shit tonne of meds at home now, including Augmentin (which IS an antibiotic *sigh*) and been prescribed a whole host of other additional pills to hopefully chase the mucus and phlegm away.

To top it off, I spent the majority of the weekend just sleeping. In uncomfortable and restless sleep. The kind where you go under the covers because you’re cold, but then you start sweating your ass off because of the fever.

It doesn’t help that your body starts aching and it adds to the already tender joints and muscles you’ve got due to water retention *SIGH*

But all the pill popping and the body discomforts is nothing in compared to the biggest bane of my current existence as a pregnant woman.

I can’t taste ANYTHING.

HOW am I supposed to be eating more and enjoying the last trimester of pregnancy if I can’t bloody hell taste anything that I’m eating?!!

*ROAR*

Okay, I suppose that it’s not exactly a very horrible thing. Honestly it makes my food decisions a tad bit easier – I don’t have to worry that I won’t like what it tastes like after buying it. As compared to what happened in the first trimester where I know that I liked something but the food would taste like ashes in my mouth…. It’s actually quite a relief in a way to know that I should just be shovelling food regardless of the taste.

The hubs made a joke in bad-taste that now would be the time to drink all the milk and eat all the cheese and even try out durian. ALL of which despite having pretty good impliocations for growing fetus in mummy’s body, I absolutely DETEST and cannot abide by tainting my mouth and stomach with..

DETEST. not hate.

That aside, imagine this –

I got myself a Macdonald’s McSpicy burger on Saturday evening because I thought the spiciness would clear my nose up a tad. And I couldn’t taste jack squat.

Like my tongue would register the spice? But I don’t know what I’m eating.

Most surreal experience ever.

It’s really quite depressing. But I’ll forge on.

I’m actually quite worried about whether the whole entire episode of sickness is going to have an impact on baby. Like is it going to affect him at all? Is the sinus issues limited to my body parts or will it somehow have some intrinsically linked effect on SOMETHING?

I mean, like I mentioned a few weeks ago, this is the first time that I’ve been this kind of sick for this long and I really don’t want to affect baby in any way at all if possible.

All I really want to do is go to sleep and hunker down until the whole cold and flu thing has gone away. But I know that I need to be up and doing work and also eating more so that baby get his nourishment….

But what else can I do? *minor freak out*

It’s even more frustrating than just being a little bit sick and all the physical “inconveniences”. With the whole entire medication thing involved now, it throws a whole different dynamic into it.

There’s a rather complicated explanation to the whole Chinese belief of the ‘Heaty’ and ‘Cooling’ types of foods which basically affect the energy (or “qi“) of your body, and I’m NOT going to get into that, save to say that you need to find a bit of a balance of the foods so that your body is in the right place.

Not being in the right place leads to sicknesses, which can be counteracted by eating / drinking the respective hot or cold -type items.

Picture this. I’ve got a stuffy nose right, and the throat is being irritated because of the congestion that’s spilling down the back of the nose. I want to clear the congestion by eating something spicy, but that’s going to make the sore throat worse.

So let’s try easing the sore throat by drinking things which are “cooling” and soothing – like barley water, or honey and lemon.

No can do – you’re pregnant and you have to drink less of the cooling things because you need a bit of warmth in the body to incubate the baby.

Baby seems to be okay with everything though. Despite of all my gripes, through the whole weekend ordeal of wanting to just crash in bed and not get up, Baby seems to know that he needs to give mummy more consistent reminders that he’s ok.

And even in my doubt and worry and haze of medication-induced drowsiness, I think that Baby has decided to take it into his own hands to be more helpful at reminding mummy that he’s okay.

So 1.6kg of little baby is throwing himself at the ribs and walls of my tummy a lot more frequently this weekend 🙂 AND at the same time, I take the flurry of movement as a distinct instruction that it’s been a while since I’ve fed him and it’s time for me to go and forage.

Speaking of which, Baby is doing his hungry dance right about now 🙂

I’m feeling really good about things and despite being sick, I know that because Baby is being super cooperative, we’ll do ok 🙂

But before I heed my baby’s kicks and prods, I’ll just leave you all with a little teaser of sorts. Alongside baby’s hints, we’ve TOTALLY been able to see baby moving from the outside.

My hubs is also getting more and more impressed with the strength of the movements that Baby is undertaking too, so if all things go well, we hope to be able to post a video of scary tummy moving in the following weeks coming up!